


Last Call

by Samuraiter



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 01:52:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samuraiter/pseuds/Samuraiter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the Silence comes, Ami can think of only one person she wants to see at the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Call

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mariko_azrael (gingayellow)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingayellow/gifts).



December 20, 2012. 11:51 PM. Less than ten minutes until the Silence, assuming that all of the predictions that had been made came to fruition. Then, one thousand years until the lifting of the Silence and the dawn of the new age. The public did not believe the warnings that had been published. They never did. For those who did have the knowledge, there was nothing to do but prepare for the inevitable and put affairs in order until the last possible minute. It was for that reason that Ami found herself in front of a door that she had visited countless times before, raising one hand to rap softly, hearing a voice, all to familiar, on the other side.

Makoto opened the door. No lights in the apartment, only a handful of candles. Through a window, the night sky seemed too clear to be real, the stars sparkling against a backdrop of perfect black, practically undisturbed by the lights of the city. All sound seemed distant, perhaps imagined. Other people had their own ideas about the meaning of December 21, about whether or not it was myth, but those concerns seemed millions of miles from the present. There was only the sound of Makoto closing the door and sinking down on the couch where she had been waiting, patting a cushion to invite Ami to sit next to her in the darkness and quiet.

"Minako's at the shrine with Rei," Makoto said, "and Usagi's at Mamoru's place. You'd think we'd all be together for something like this." She looked up at the ceiling, adding, as she hugged a pillow to her chest, "But I guess the Silence doesn't seem like much after everything else we've been through. It's just one more thing. A very long thing." Unlike her to be pensive in those late days. She had long since come out of her shell, after all. But no one could be free of doubt, not on a day that they had all been anticipating for the past two decades. Knowing the outcome of it all did not make it any easier for them to face the long solitude ahead.

"We know we'll all be together again when all's said and done," Ami replied, folding her hands in her lap. "It's a little like grieving, I suppose. Everybody handles it in their own way. People go to the ones they trust most." That she had come to Makoto had not gone unnoticed. That Makoto had been waiting for her had not gone unnoticed, either. "It almost feels like celebrating the new year, when I think about it. We're waiting for midnight." Outside, the stars seemed indifferent. There was the faint honk of a horn on one of the neighboring streets, quickly hushed.

11:54 PM. Makoto rested her chin on top of the pillow, trying to decide what she wanted to say next, knowing that she had very little time to say it. Ami waited patiently, her face as serene as she could make it. She was not about to disappear into one thousand years of nothingness without knowing the answer to the one question she had never asked, but she understood that there was no use rushing it. The seconds ticked past, the miniature gears and coils of her watch seeming loud despite her placing one hand over it to keep it quiet. Then, Makoto took a deep breath and turned to face her, a wan smile making her seem older than she was.

"It really isn't fair, is it?" she asked. "I keep thinking of everything we could've done with all this time. Instead of preparing, you know." 11:56 PM. "They keep saying it'll be like no time passed at all. It'll be like waking up from a deep sleep. Will we remember everything? Everyone?" Fear seemed to float immediately beneath the surface of her gaze. "I can't sit by and take that chance. Ami, I —" But Ami had already opened her arms to her, and she swept her up in a warm embrace, leaning her head against her shoulder and holding her tightly, as if determined to be frozen by her side when the Silence came down upon both of them.

11:59 PM. The small clock on the end table sported the time in neon green. Ami found herself holding her breath, the only sound the beating of Makoto's heart next to her ear. The seconds passed, and she looked up at the face of the one she had long ago realized that she loved. Makoto looked back down at her, her face reassuring, the way it always was in the best memories the two of them shared. One more second passed. The numbers on the clock changed. 12:00 AM. December 21, 2012. The hour of the Silence had come.

Ami had seen all that the event had done to the Tokyo of the future. All of the Sailor Senshi had conditioned themselves to expect the end of their civilization, that it might be built up from nothing into the paradise that their Queen had been born to rule. She had expected the freezing of the entire planet, spreading across its entire surface in seconds, plunging all of humanity into a sleep as deep as death. The exact source of it had never been determined. All that they knew was that it could not be prevented, and that it was a fact of history that they had been asked to accept almost since the beginning of their endless war for the world to come.

12:01 AM. Nothing. The sky had not changed. The hum of traffic on the highways stayed constant.12:02 AM. Nothing. Life in Tokyo continued as it always had. Ami exhaled a breath that she had been holding, looking up at Makoto again, only to see tears running down her face despite her smile. 12:03 AM. No Silence. The course of events had been rewritten. A flurry of texts and calls from the other Sailor Senshi would most likely follow in a rush, but ... not yet. Not yet. There was still at least a moment of perfect stillness before that started happening.

"Makoto." She had only to say her name for her best friend in all the world to lean down and give her a kiss that she had been meaning to give her for as long as they had been friends. That they had all of time stretching before them served to illuminate the possibility that the Silence had threatened to cut short, and that illumination, brought a sense of peace to them that neither of them had known before.

 **END**.


End file.
